240031 VS Culture and Disability (3.2.5) (2011W)

The aim of the seminar is to introduce the field of disability, as a socio-cultural phenomenon, to the participants. This is done by exploring several key concepts, such as embodiment, identity, space and culture, and by discussing the significance of disability studies.

During the last twenty years the question of human body has become one of the central concerns, not only to anthropology, but social sciences in general. The amount of discussions that are related to social bodies, symbolic bodies, colonial bodies, gendered bodies etc. is considerable. It seems, however, that despite the ethnographic enthusiasm for exploring bodily issues as well as considering the embodiment as a paradigm for anthropology, the problem of disability, with reference to anthropological research, has remained unattractive. That is to say, the questions which primarily concern the disabled bodies still require a more profound exploration. Moreover, disability, as a personal and socio-cultural issue, offers an extreme example of the ways in which the symbols of health, meaning of social space, power relations, realm of control and the question of identity intersect with the experiences of self. Briefly, disability - as a research agenda - exemplifies the possibilities of anthropological research in a contemporary world and informs us about the social and political debates on well-being.